Web Spins/May

For the first time – in time ^-^ to report on my spinning for the challenge. The technique for May is Corespinning where loose fibres or an already spun yarn  is wrapped around the base/core yarn. New to me but once I started I didn’t want to stop and am delighted with the results.

this bit is from naturally dyed fibres; gorse, madder, brazilwood, eucalyptus and natural grey merino

and this is a mix of naturally and man made dyed fibres

It’s hard not to love this technique – it enables all the colourful fibres to show their full beauty as the yarn is being wrapped almost diagonally around the core. I used commercially spun 3 ply yarn choosing colours  along the way. Overtwisting is the danger but when  simmered gently for a short time and dried naturally it straightened wonderfully. Big thank you for this tip goes to my spinning advisor Renata from B.ena.

something new

After a while there are some new pieces in my red2white shop.

big silk scarf in light yellow, grey, heather and teal/blue

and a fine merino wool scarf in terracotta red and almost black

both dyed with plants.

transform

•  to change greatly the appearance or form of
•  to change the nature, condition or function of
•  to subject to a transformation
•  to undergo a transformation

From fibre to yarn to cloth to cushion covers. Most of the yarn is my samples for Web Spins.

I know, I have said it here before, but I am still quite mesmerized by this transformations.

Now this set of cushion covers  transforms the look of our sofas. And there is one more in the company – I have just finished the machine knitted one too.

seven

I feel festive today. Over the past weeks I have been working on seven cushion covers.  Now they are completely finished and ready to be posted.

The front is made of felt panels. I first handspun yarn from various white and grey wools, silks, bamboo, viscose, hemp and  linen and then felted it into a wool base.  The back is beautiful linen from Bulgaria I highly recommend.

I could watch how the yarn twists and travells for a long time…

 

evening/heiku

Evening weaving.

Weaving evening.

Weaving light.

how to keep pots warm

I thought I would share this little tip with you, especially if you live in cooler climates.

Yesterday morning, after everyone left the house, I put my big dyeing pot on the hob with few bundles of silk and eucalyptus leaves and started dyeing. The temperatures outside are still bellow 10 C so the hob is really the only source of heat at the moment. I cooked the bundles for some time and then bundled the pot into two big terry towells, covering the whole heap with my old feather filled gillet. Out the kitchen it went to the utility room until this morning. I was so delighted to discover today that the dyebath is still 40 C and it was only a matter of minutes to bring it to a simmering point again. Now it’s  resting again in the utility until tomorrow.

Tornado/Web Spins/April

Hello May, spinningwise I am still in April.

The  technique to try and learn in April was Tornado. Instead of splitting and pre-drafting the fibre as the book suggests  I took a shortcut and used the thin roving I bought long time ago. It’s some sort of down wool. I don’t remember the name anymore; all I remember is that it felts much slower than merino yet is rather fine. It’s the white fibre on the right in the picture and is spun into a base yarn around which the rest is bundled; from the left: machine knitting yarns – lambswool and silk, at the bottom sewing threads – grey (spent) and metalic silver.

Jacey warns that it is one of the slower spinning techniques and my choice to use the metalic thread made it even slower. It was much stiffer than the rest and had the will on it’s own, catching on the lazy kate and creating big loops.

I found it very helpful that I didn’t need to draft at all  instead concentrating on keeping the threads together and yet not too much together so that they would twist around freely.

To me the main difference between Tornado and Autowrap is that with Tornado to create the ‘wild’ effect I had to somewhat ‘fed’ the yarns around the base fibre to create the loops. Had I let them to wrap on their own the finished yarn would have been much smoother. Now it resambles a boucle yarn and I love  it’s texture. By changing colours and the wrapping yarns + having a jumbo flier lots and lots of yarns with quite a difference could be spun.

Here it is in action - woven next to other yarns a I have already spun for the challenge. Soon I will show you the finished pieces.

I would love to see your Tornado yarn, if you are still doing the challenge, please leave the link to your photos in the comment box. Life has been busy on many fronts here but I am determine to continue spinning – next is the corespun!